


Fifteen Dollars

by bissonomy (Macdicilla)



Series: oh my god they were neighbours [1]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Conspiracy Theories, Gen, Minor Illness, Neighbours, Post-Canon, Post-Vetinari Ankh-Morpork, Retirement, truly i love to perfect the art of the longform shitpost
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 20:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18746431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macdicilla/pseuds/bissonomy
Summary: Forced to stay home from work for a few days by a bout of bronchitis, a very bored Adora Belle Dearheart comes up with a conspiracy theory that the retired former Patrician and his clerk are living in the house next door to hers.She offers her husband fifteen dollars to prove her wrong.It's harder than he expected.





	1. corkboard and black yarn

Adora Belle Dearheart had fallen ill with a particularly rough case of bronchitis. It had been a particularly cold spring, and she’d had to spend more of it than usual outdoors, running a mass inspection of the urban clacks network, including the new clacks towers that had been built within five miles of the city bounds. Adora Belle was not the sort to delegate often, and personally seeing to all the towers had cost her a lot of energy. On doctors’ orders, she was to stay home till she felt better, and then for two more days after that, to avoid strenuous activity, and not to have any cigarettes. The last part was tricky. The illness already made her tired, achy, and irritable, and the temporary withdrawal was compounding the effect. As was the boredom.

“I’ll go mad without work,” she confessed to her husband.

“Don’t go _too_ mad,” Moist said, and gave her a peck on the cheek before leaving for work.

He worked in the palace these days. Not as the Patrician, of course, because that was Mr Ironfoundersson, and would be for the next five years. Moist was Deputy Patrician, one of the new offices that had been created seven weeks ago during the Great Restructuring before Vetinari stepped down, presumably to get some decent rest for the first time in over thirty years. When asked by the paper why the office of Patrician had been split into two offices, Vetinari had answered that it was for humane reasons, and when asked how he’d been managing to do it all by himself, he’d smiled bleakly and declined further comment.

There were also some cabinet ministers now, for good measure. Adora Belle wasn’t sure what they did. She had ample time to find out, she supposed, since she was confined to the house.

But first, a nap. A nap would feel good. Not here in the chair by the entryway, though. She’d get up and go to bed upstairs. Or to the couch in the living room. In just a second. In just a second after she’d finished shutting her eyes.

Forty minutes later, Adora Belle awoke blearily to the sound of the newspaper paper hitting the door. She retrieved the paper and sat down in the living room to read it. It had apparently been a slow news day. There was a piece on a new trade deal between Vanglemesht and Nef, and how this would affect Ankh-Morpork (it wouldn’t). There was a piece on the Urban Survival Scouts, and how gang membership had very slightly decreased since the Scouts’ foundation. There were some letters to the editor, one of which was written by a curmudgeonly dentist, complaining about the layout of the current exhibit in the metallurgy museum. There were more human interest stories than usual. One of them, no longer than ninety words, featured an iconograph of the now-retired Lord Vetinari on holiday. He was in a black long-sleeved high-necked swim shirt, relaxing in a hot spring in–she read the caption–Nothingfjord. He looked a couple years younger already. Good for him.

Adora left the paper out on the coffee table and wandered into the study to practice darts.

Slightly after noon, she wandered into the kitchen to help the cook, Mr Hackles, cut onions for a soup. Ordinarily, Mr Hackles would have objected, but the prospect of the mistress of the house being bored out of her skin seemed more troublesome to him than the mistress of the house helping out in the kitchen.

The sound of a rhythmic thwacking next door distracted her from her vegetable chopping.

It wasn’t coming from the Vimeses’ home, which was to the left of Adora Belle’s. It would have been of no interest if it had been coming from the Vimeses’, since they had to mend the dragon pens pretty much every fortnight.

The thwacking was coming from the other side. She’d thought that the 183 Scoone Avenue house was empty. It had been for sale for ages. Perhaps someone was trying to break in. That would be exciting to watch!

She excused herself from the kitchen and strode over to a window. The ‘For Sale’ sign was gone. A small flock of rental goats were munching the overgrown lawn down to size. Amidst the huge, sprawling rhododendrons stood a small man in a short-sleeved shirt, clipping the bushes with a thick pair of pruning shears.

///

“And that man was Mr Drumknott,” she told Moist.

“‘Surprisingly buff’ doesn’t sound like Mr Drumknott,” Moist said politely.

Adora Belle rolled her eyes.

“Well, no,” she said, “that’s _why_ it’s surprising.”

Moist scooted forward and rearranged one of the sofa cushions more comfortably.

“I’m not sure he’s in the city, though,” Moist said. “It could be someone else who looks like him. I was under the impression that he’d also gone abroad on holiday.”

“Well he’s–”

She raised a finger, had a small, unpleasant-sounding coughing fit into a black cotton handkerchief, breathed deeply for a few seconds, and said.

“Well he’s–.”

“Bless you,” Moist said.

“Don’t interrupt me,” Adora Belle continued. “I was saying he’s next door _now_.”

“Drumknott came back early to buy himself a house on Scoone Avenue? The palace’s pension plan is generous, but I don’t think quite it’s that generous.”

“Ah,” said Adora Belle, “that is where my theory begins. Follow me.”

She led him into the study, where she’d taken down the painting of a placid river scene that hung on the wall over Moist’s desk and had replaced it with a corkboard. On this corkboard was a diagram made of pushpins, index cards, and newspaper clippings. Some off the pins were linked to each other by black yarn.[1]

“Okay,” said Moist, and gently placed the back of his hand on her forehead to check for fever.

Adora Bell placed the back of her hand on his forehead a little less gently.

“Spike!” he said, “Ow!”

“You listen to me,” she said. “It actually all makes perfect sense. Drumknott’s not on holiday. Possibly, he never went on holiday. What I do know is that he’s living right next door to us! And he’s living with Vetinari, who isn’t on holiday either.”

“Let’s not speculate about Vetinari’s private life,” said Moist. “Plus, don’t people say he has a vampire lady-friend in Uberwald?”

Adora Belle waved her hand.

“That’s purely rumour, but I find it fascinating that you’re implying that it’s okay to speculate as long as your speculations are heterosexual.”

“I never said that!” he protested. “Don’t put words in my mouth!”

“Let’s move on to figure two,” she said, ignoring him.

“What was figure one?”

“Figure one was the clerk sighting next door, which I’ve represented here.”

Adora Belle indicated a drawing she’d done on the back of an index card. Graphic design had never been her passion, so the rhododendron bush was represented by a green blob with smaller pink squiggles inside it, and Mr Drumknott was represented by a stick figure. One of its arms was holding a pair of pruning shears and the other arm was helpfully labelled “jacked.” It wore a pair of round glasses and its dark hair was perfectly parted down the centre.

“That’s him, all right,” said Moist.

“Figure two is this clipping from today’s _Times,_ ” she said.

“Which says that Vetinari’s on holiday in Nothingfjord.”

“Ah, but take a closer look at the _picture_ ,” Adora Belle explained. “Look at the sign on the left, behind his shoulder.”

“I’m looking.”

“It says ‘renne nicht’!”

“What’s strange about putting a ‘don’t run’ sign in a thermal spring?”

“It’s funny that the sign is in Überwaldian when he’s allegedly in Nothingfjord, hmm?” she asked.

“They speak–”

“I know you’re going to say that they speak Überwaldian in Nothingfjord too, but it’s only the second official language, and by law, things have to be posted in both Überwaldian and Fjaroese.”

“But there could be a ‘don’t run’ sign in Fjaroese outside of frame,” Moist heard himself saying.

“Yes, we could invent an invisible sign in Fjaroese to make it fit the public narrative,” huffed Adora Belle, “or we could accept that it was in fact taken two years ago, in Überwald, when Lord Vetinari was in Überwald for–”

Here she picked up a pencil from Moist’s pot of sundry office utensils, which had been pilfered from other offices over the years, and jabbed the eraser end at another newspaper clipping.

“The G7a summit!”

Gods, thought Moist, I knew she’d get bored, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad. She’s really gone ‘round the bend now. Also, we really need to stop hoarding old newspapers.

“So, you’re saying the iconograph is actually two years old?” he asked faintly.

“Precisely. Look at the hair. Can we talk about the hair? We’ve got to. Ask me about the hair.”

Moist sighed. He knew, or at least hoped that she’d be back to normal in a few days. In the interim, there was nothing to do but wait it out.

“Go on,” he said wearily.

“Compare the hair, Moist,” Adora Belle said calmly, “compare the hair _here_ with the hair in _this_ iconograph.”

With the same pencil, she pointed out a picture clipped from the article about the new Patrician. The picture showed Lord Vetinari handing Carrot Ironfoundersson and Moist von Lipwig the purely symbolic Keys and Spare Keys of Ankh-Morpork.

“His hair’s lighter in this one than in the more recent one,” Moist was forced to conclude.

“The alleged more recent one,” Adora Belle clarified. “But yes.”

“He could have dyed it, though,” said Moist. “You told me once you thought he dyed his hair.”

“I’m not inclined to believe that anymore,” said Adora Belle firmly.

“Oh,” he said, “Okay.”

It was hard to argue with that.

Adora Belle’s eyes narrowed.

“You don’t believe any of this,” she said.

“No,” he admitted, “because it’s _absolutely insane_. It’s unhinged. You seem to be enjoying yourself, which is nice, but you haven’t actually proven anything.”

Her face went almost aggressively blank. Moist reflected for a second that he ought to have phrased it less condescendingly.

“Fifteen dollars,” said Adora Belle.

“Fifteen dollars?”

“Yes. Let’s bet fifteen dollars on it. If I’m right, and I can prove that our new neighbours are who I say they are, you cough up. If I’m wrong and you can prove the contrary–”

Here she was beset by another coughing fit. It was full of unpleasant, phlegmy noises. Adora Belle sat down in the chair and groaned. When she breathed, it sounded slightly wheezy.

“Hate this,” she muttered. “ _Gods_. Hate getting sick.”

“Many people would agree with you,” Moist said.

Adora Belle scowled.

“Look, Moist, is the bet on or not?”

In his previous line of work, before he had been press-ganged into becoming an honest, civic-minded individual, he had learned many useful guidelines for life. One of these was: don’t make a bet unless you’re certain you’ll win it. Adora Belle’s confidence in her assertions would have made his certainty flicker if she hadn’t been talking such rot. He thought to himself that it wouldn’t be very nice to take advantage of his wife’s illness-induced boredom to win fifteen dollars and the satisfaction of being right. But that was his second thought. His first thought had been: make it twenty.

“Sure,” he said.

 

[1] Adora Belle didn't knit but went through phases of convincing herself that she did, which is why she kept yarn around. Mostly, she liked holding knitting needles. Something about them called to her. She felt the same calling towards stiletto heels.

 


	2. the dark clerks

It would be easy, Moist thought. The dark clerks would know. The dark clerks knew everything. It was their job to know everything about everyone. They gave Moist the heebiest of jeebies, but it was a relief to be working on the right side of them now. Not that he had ever been working against them, of course. He had worked alongside them when he worked for the previous Patrician. It was just that Moist privately thought that the only right side to be on with such an alarming body of men and women was in charge of them.

He decided not to visit the dark clerks in their office, since that might make his request seem too formal. Moist wanted to pose the question more casually, so he approached the dark clerk breakroom, which was on the fifth floor and overlooked the palace gardens.

When he got to the door, Moist paused in front of it, steeling himself. He hoped not to meet with Smith or Ishmael. Godfrey, he could more or less deal with. Ward was quite nice, and only intimidating physically. Silkworm, on the other hand–

“Come in, Mr von Lipwig, sir,” said a high voice from within.

It was eerie how they did that.

“Recognized my tread, Columbine?” Moist essayed.

“No, sir,” she said. “There’s a hidden angled mirror. And I’m Wiggs, sir. Columbine’s on leave.”

“Right,” he said, and entered.

Wiggs, he could talk to. Wiggs was fresh enough that she probably thought of him as the current Patrician’s second-in-command, and not as the old Patrician’s rescue project. Granted, none of the other dark clerks had ever said anything implying Moist was a rescue project, but he wasn’t exactly sure where he stood in the estimations of the more senior dark clerks and had decided it was safest to assume the worst.

Wiggs stood up to greet him. She kept her eyes on him despite a persistent beeping from a metal box on the countertop behind her. Moist looked at the box.

“At ease,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said, and opened a door along the front of the box. From it, she produced a square glass bowl full of something reddish brown. Steam was coming out of it.

“Thank you, Michael,” Wiggs said to the box, and placed her bowl on the table. She remained standing and didn’t touch her food.

“Can I help you with anything, sir?”

“It’s–don’t worry about it, Wiggs, this isn’t anything official. Please do have a seat. I wouldn’t keep you from your lunch.”

Wiggs thanked him and sat down. From a bag on the table, she produced a sliced bun and a spoon, which she used to scoop the stuff from the bowl—lentils, apparently—into the bun. She topped it with parmesan cheese.

“Oh, don’t do _that_ ,” said a tinny voice from the box.

Wiggs gave Moist a shrug as if to say, talking metal boxes, you know how judgemental they are. He did not know.

“Is there an imp in there?”

“Yep,” said Wiggs. “He heats small things up with thaumic radiation.”

Moist must have made a face because she rushed to reassure him.

“Not the kind that mutates rats, sir!” she said. “It comes in waves, see, at different speeds. The fast ones are the dangerous ones, the middle ones make up the visible octarine spectrum,[1] and the slow ones are the ones Michael here makes to heat things up.”

“I see,” said Moist, who really didn’t, “Michaelwaves.”

“Right.”

He’d ask her now. He’d get right to the point and catch her off guard. He’d make it look offhand and she wouldn’t even realize what she’d told him when she told him.

“You know, Vetinari would have really found that interesting,” he said, lying through his teeth. The man had no interest in the processes of magic and engineering. Magical engineering would have bored him to tears. He preferred to understand the people who made them work.

“I wonder where he is now,” Moist said, very laid-back, very casually.

Wiggs squinted at him.

“Is this some kind of test, sir?” she asked warily.

“I should think it was your job to know where people are.”

“Yes,” said Wiggs, “but it’s also my job not to know where some people are. It’s one of the perks of you and Mr Ironfoundersson’s job, not being surveilled once you retire.”

Moist raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t realized he was doing it.

“Sorry,” she added. “No, that’s not actually true. But it _is_ above my clearance level. I don’t personally know.”

“I thought it was public knowledge he was on holiday. Nothingfjord, currently, according to the paper.”

“Oh, er,” said Wiggs, wearing the expression of a person who has been lacquering a wood floor and has just realized that they’ve lacquered themselves into a corner. She took a bite of her lentil sandwich to buy some time to think.

Moist waited silently. Eventually, she cleared her throat.

“If it’s a matter of critical importance and you want his lordship’s guidance for something, sir, I could send out an encrypted clacks out to Arachne and have her contact him,” she said helpfully. “But he said he wasn’t to be contacted unless it was critically important.”

“I’m not trying to get in touch with him,” said Moist.

“He said that if it was only moderately important, we should give you an Istanzian ring.”

Moist’s mind immediately went to ‘Agatean burn, but on your finger,’ and he knew that couldn’t be right.

“Really?” he said. “That sounds... odd.”

“It’s from a Klatchian story,” Wiggs said, sensing his puzzlement, “from the _Exactly One Thousand Nights_. A sultan passes on the kingdom to his son and leaves him this ring to help him, this ring with a compartment, and says he only ought to open it in the time of greatest need. And there’s some times of pretty great need, but the son thinks, I’ll deal with it myself and save the ring for when I really need it. And eventually, he decides that it _is_ the time of greatest need, and opens it, and–”

“Something like ‘this too shall pass’ is written inside?”

“Precisely, sir,” said Wiggs. “His lordship said it was one of the best pranks in literary history, and that he wished he had a son to play it on.”

“I think he was joking, sir,” Wiggs added, after a pause.

“Famously funny man, Lord Vetinari,” Moist muttered. “What about Mr Drumknott?”

“Not quite as funny, but we saw him laugh once when a wizard slipped on some wet cobblestones.”

“No, I meant–”

“Didn’t want to be bothered either, sir. He also left orders.”

“But surely his orders don’t carry the same weight.”

Wiggs looked hurt.

“Well, no, but there is honour among clerks,” she said.

“Yes, but he wasn’t a dark clerk,” Moist pointed out, “he was a _clerk_ clerk.”

“He was cross-trained.”

“Oh,” said Moist, ignoring the part of his mind trying to picture the little man primly stabbing someone in the kidneys.

“Look,” said Moist, “I’m not trying to bother anyone. It’s only for a silly bet with my wife.”

Clerk Godfrey chose that moment to enter the dark clerk breakroom, and fixed Moist with a cold, hard look. Moist half expected him to say, ‘Lord Vetinari never called on the dark clerks to win silly bets with his wife,’ for which Moist had prepared the retort, ‘yes, for the very good reason he never had one,’ but instead Godfrey simply said,

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Good afternoon, Godfrey.”

“Can I help you with anything, sir?” asked Godfrey.

“No,” said Moist, standing up. “In fact, I was just getting back to my office.”

“Very well,” said Godfrey, who turned and pulled down a mug from one of the cabinets. He filled it with water from the tap and placed it in the Michaelwave box on the countertop.

“Oh _no_ ,” moaned the imp, loudly enough for Moist to hear it from the corridor, “you really ought to be using a kettle for that.”

 

 

[1] Visible only to wizards, that is.


End file.
